No wheels

I have an issue that I’m sure a lot of people have. I have no wheels. When I say wheels I am speaking of leg muscles. I want the thick quads and hams while sporting boulders in my calves but despite all efforts they are my Achilles heel. I have debated the idea of laying off my upper body because it responds so well versus my lower and hammer it part of my legs on a 3 day rotation. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!

A: It would be nice if I could see you previous or current program so I can best evaluate it. you can do this by sending it to me at: vince@vandrich.com

Now, I can give you some ideas that have allowed me to help thousands of guys and girls with the same problem.

1) Legs (quads, hams and calves) are used to doing lots of work, and for most using lighter weights in the 10-15 rep range does wonders. Also, because the muscles of the quads usually steer athletes to squats, they believe that they must go for maximum weights (most sets under 6-reps) to get any results. The problem with this approach is that for many, the lower back and even lung power becomes the factor that greatly affects where theses heavy sets end. In other words, the training effect on the quads themselves is greatly reduced and so while it seems you are getting stronger, the target muscles do not get enough stimulation to grow.

2) As mentioned above, these target muscles need a lot of stimulation to grow, and unless you organize your program where you can throw a significant amount of work on them, they will also resist. I like to pick one movement per muscle group (quads, hams and calves are all one body part) and then shoot to make them do a substantial amount of work for each movement.

A program like this above would look something like this:

Leg Press—6-sets of 12-15 reps

Stiff Leg Deadlifts: 6-sets of 12-15 reps

Seated Calf Raises––6-sets of 12-15 reps

The next training session for legs could then be:

Squats—6-sets of 12-15 reps

Standing Leg Curls — 6-sets of 12-15 reps

Standing Calve Raise — 6-sets of 12-15 reps

As far as laying off your upper body, your best bet would be to reduce the amount of work you do for upper body, so that you shift the bulk of your recovery ability on to your legs/calves.